Walnut Cutting Board With Inlay

13/09/2020Uncategorizedroy

Had some 28mm thick walnut counter top cutoffs that i could reuse for an end grain cutting board.

I started by cutting some 60mm wide strips on the table saw, and glued these up into an end grain block.

Then it was left to dry in the clamps overnight

Equal clamping pressure from both sides prevents cupping

Nest step was to scrape off the glue, and get it flat. As I do not own a drum sander, I figured an old paint scraper would remove the bulk of the glue, and I could make use of the CNC to flatten it.

This worked out great. First I flattened one side, and flipped it over to make the 2 sides parallel.

The bit I used was a relative small one as my large cnc does not have a fully trued up spindle to the cutting surface.

I made 50% stepover passes withan 8mm bit.

It came out looking like this:

Small ridges from surfacing was easily removed during sanding

Final thickness ended up at approx 55mm.

Then I sanded it down before I cut the pockets for the inlay.

I thought that a beef cutting chart could make for a cool look. On the inlay wood I wnet with ash for good contrast. Hard maple is hard to get your hands on where I live.

Pocket was cut with a 30 degree v cutter

Then the opposing plug was cut from the end grain ash glue up.

Plenty of glue in the pocket and on the plug, and into the clamps for another 24 hours.

Many cut the majority of the excess plug away by cutting in the slot with the bandsaw. As my cutting depth exceeds the cut capacity of my small bandsaw, I decided to chick it up in my cnc and surface the top of the plug. I left approx 0.5 mm for sanding.

While watching Drew Fisher over on Fisher Shops channel he showed how he made a recess cutout for a plate on the backside of the cutting board. This makes it extremely easy to just slide the freshly cut parts onto a plate.

So thats what I did as well.